1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer database systems and, more specifically, to techniques for providing application programs access to their corresponding databases.
2. Description of the Related Art
Relational database systems are widely used in business, government and other organizations to record, store, process, share and otherwise warehouse information. A typical relational database system likely facilitates the storage and exchange of information between a number of databases and an even greater number of application programs.
When connecting to a database, an application developer needs to specify a list of properties associated with the database before a connection can be established. For new users it is difficult to find the minimal properties needed to connect to the databases. Java developers may not appreciate the implications of these options on application and database performance. Database administrators are more familiar with the appropriate options for each application—but may not have access to the individual applications. For databases that are widely used throughout an enterprise system, the process of monitoring and updating applications using particular database connection properties can involve a tremendous amount of work in identifying and then properly updating the affected applications. What's more, an enterprise may have thousands of these database systems, further adding to the work and overhead to the process of updating database connection properties.
Directory services have been created to provide an application developer with the ability to map the names of certain network resources to their respective network addresses. With the use of directory services, such as LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), one could conceivably implement a directory service of database systems in order to facilitate the administration and management of these connection properties to the databases in an enterprise. However, problems exist with using a directory service or LDAP as most database administrators prefer to avoid introducing another system, such as a new directory service or LDAP, in order to minimize complexity and overhead associated with the enterprise.